Gricean Disabuse

----- By J. L. S.
----------- for the GC

--- IN HIS FASCINATING comment on "Unity and Continuity", THIS BLOG, Kramer analyses in great Gricean detail, 'rhetoric' tags like,

"Professor Smith has recently put forward his view that Dawkins is wrong. Smith relies, appropriately, on a number of publications wich are pretty interesting. Smith has it (but then why wouldn't he?) right, when he says that Dawkins has it wrong."

---- Such charade is only a pantomime of rational argumentation!

--- On the other hand, there's J. M. Geary. In his novel, "Buckley and Co.", (ch. iii), -- this blog -- Geary pours scorn on the clumsiness some seldom-articulated writers (he means _me_) find themselves (not: theirselves) when grasping 'anaphora'. Geary writes:

Meanwhile, Phatic sat down
and explained to JL that he (Phatic)(1)
had been hired by someone (he didn't know whom)(2)
to track down and return him (JL)(3)
to Kabul for a meeting
with someone whom he (Phatic)(4) didn't know.
He (Phatic)(5) was told to wait
here (in this spot) (6) with JL,
and he ((the one whom he (Phatic)(7)
didn't know))(8)
would meet them (JL and Phatic)(9)
there ((where they (Phatic and JL)(10)
were)). (11)
Why had Phatic been hired? You (the reader) (12)
ask. Because he (Phatic) (13)
was not only a security-agent
for the MGM Grand Illusion
Casino (not to be confused with
the MGM Grand Casino --
though no one's certain
just what the distinction is) he (Phatic) (14)
was also an undercover agent for the FBI,
on loan from the NSA. He had joined the NSA
fresh out of college because he (Phatic)(15)
wanted to kill people.
What better ruse than national security, he (Phatic) (16)
reckoned.
JL thought he (Phatic) (17)
shouldn't be telling him (JL) (18)
this stuff and covered his (JL's own)(19) ears.
This also reminded JL of a thought
he had once had, namely, that
reading a writer who doesn't trust
his readers to make
the right pronoun-antecedent
connections can be very tiresome indeed.

Notes

(1) Phatic sat down and
explained to JL that he
had been hired.

This is indeed ambiguous. Hence the need to provide the catapahoric mark (cata-, backward-looking) bracket. It's _Phatic_ and not JL who had been hired. One may argue that if it had been JL who had been hired, JL should know about that, but surely he could have forgotten.

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(2) Phatic had been hired
by someone
to track JL down.

This is surely indefinite. The only tag we have, as per Logiclandian, is (Ex). Grice's example: "Peter is meeting a woman this evening" (not his wife). "Someone" implies the utterer does not know or cares to tell. In which case, the bracket specifying the right option seems in order, "someone (he didn't know whom)". It can be argued that (2) does not compare with (1) in that it's less 'echoingly clumsy'.


---------------------------


(3) He had been hired by
someone to track down and return
him to Kabul.

Surely ambiguous. Hence the need to expand on the 'him' as Geary does to read "JL". It may be argued that Phatic could very hardly have been hired to track down and return himself -- never mind 'his self' -- to Kabul. But it would not be impossible to think that the 'hirer' did not know that Phatic knew that he was Phatic, etc.


----------------------------


(4) He had to track down and return him
to Kabul for a meeting with someone
whom he didn't know.

This is pretty ambiguous -- to the third degree, and in a opaque context. Geary cares to make it explicit (disimplicate, or nimplicate) that who didn't know who that someone was was Phatic, not JL. It could be argued that if Phatic did not know who, it would be less likely that JL would, but to presuppose that JL was not in the know would be underestimate JL's cognitive capacities.


------------------------------


(5)-(6). He was told to wait
here.

Surely ambiguous, a-referential, and deictic. Hence the need to specify he is Phatic and that 'here' is the spot in the fictional scenario where the novel takes place: Las Vegas.

--------------------------------


(7)-(11) He was told to wait here
with JL, and he would meet them
there.

While terse, and perhaps something a book editor would be pleased with, it fails to specify a number of considerations -- and now, we are not wedded to Jason Stanley! He is Phatic, the here is deictic, Las Vegas, now the second 'he' is surely not Phatic, it's this 'someone' who Phatic does not know, rather than does not care to reveal the identity. The 'there' is indeed the 'here' for Phatic and JL, but since Geary is narrating, or reporting the speech from this 'someone''s perspective, he needs (Geary does) or feels he (Geary) needs to specify, and he does.

-------------------------------

(12) Why had Phatic been hired? You ask.

Cfr. 'Why had Phatic been hired?', you ask. -- While perhaps orthographically more correct, it distracts the attention. Geary echoes the question by posing it. This also shows this is a _roman_, a modern thing. In Old English it would have been thou aksian. While the thing may be read by more than one, the fact that Geary chooses 'you' to indicate, 'the reader' rather than 'ye, readers' is an Anglicism. In German, 'reader' and 'readers' are spelt the same, I think (cfr. recent film with Kate Winslet, Die Leser.

------------------------------------


(13)-(16). He was not only
a security-agent, he was
also an undercover agent for the FBI,
on loan from the NSA. He had joined the NSA
fresh out of college because he
wanted to kill people. What better ruse
than national security, he
reckoned.

This is a pantomime of Virginia Woolf and her stream of blooming consciousness! (Which she drew from Proust). Surely in such a narrative, the presence of 'he', within the stream, can be held to be 'permanent'. But Geary is asking: What is permanent in a stream? Answer: Nought. As Shelley says, "Nothing remains -- but Mutability" (Heracleitus, etc.). So the need to specify the reference of each 'he' with Phatic. Especially as we dwell on fictional ground where we are talking of 'kill[ing] people', where the very reck'ning has to be properly acredited.

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(17)-(19) JL thought he
shouldn't be telling him
this stuff and covered his ears.

Again, here we are back to Frege-Russell on sense and denotatum. The first 'he' needs to be specified in a way that co-reference with the second 'he' is ruled out. And this Geary does by specifying the first 'he' as being Phatic and the second 'he' as being JL. The problem then arises as to what ears JL is covering. It could be argued that a parenthetical at this point -- to the effect that it was JL's ears may be seen to _follow_ from the fact that it's JL who thinks he shouldn't be told this things. But JL may be attempting to cover Phatic's ears with a further implicature: if it's bad enough for _JL_ to hear those things, it should be bad enough for _Phatic_ to hear those things, too. With the further entailment that Phatic should NOT be saying those things simpliciter

----


I propose then to replay the paragraph without the parenthetical, just to note that Geary is not aping Robe-Grillet:

Meanwhile, Phatic sat down and explained to JL that he had been hired by someone
to track down and return him to Kabul for a meeting with someone. He was told to wait here with him, and he would meet them there. He was not only a security-agent,
but he was also an undercover agent for the FBI, on loan from the NSA. He had joined the NSA fresh out of college because he wanted to kill people. 'What better ruse than national security,' he reckoned. JL thought he shouldn't be telling him this stuff and covered his ears.

--- 'he' versus someone. 'here and there'.

Geary goes meta-fictional when he moralises:

This also reminded JL of a thought he had once had, viz., that reading a writer who doesn't trust his readers to make the right pronoun-antecedent
connections can be very tiresome indeed.

That depends a lot on who the writer is!